Kmluby's response to the letter

From Tai’s Blog:

“In his melancholy and half thoughts and sadness, the narrator finds a sense of rejuvenation in this sublime act. This is divinely hopeful to me. In the existential quandaries found in aging: the fear of death, the fear of age, the fear of Michael Bay films, there is mind reviving. There is not hope, this is bigger than that, there is the act of experience in all moments that go by. We just gotta notice and learn to read them. At least I think this is what the Wordsworth and Kevin L are getting at.

This is separate from the idea that one can derive pleasure from pain and more so that pain is, in itself, a path to pleasure. That fear and death are components to a certain type of beauty. It's just a matter of recognition. And recognition is a part of epiphany.”

Well I’m not sure if that’s what I meant (do I ever know what I mean?) but I’m rather fond of your interpretation and your ideas Tai, I think I will steal a bit and roll with it.

If I am following your logic, a true Aesthete can exist beyond the constant threat of aging, death, and Michael Bay films by experiencing, recognizing, or reflecting on

“These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

And passing even into my purer mind,

With tranquil restoration” (Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey)

Alright! I will buy that Tai. By living among “beauteous forms” we forget “lonely rooms” and “the din of towns and cities” and death and growing old. These “beauteous forms” if recognized by an Aesthetic Hero (or just any old “right thinking” hero) will course thorough our veins, will resurrect us. But why death? Why Pain? Why do we have to live with these terrible emotions, terrible thoughts in order to be rejuvenated, to find, as you put it Tai, the “mind reviving?” We continuously read things like Eliot where we must trust in hope amongst the hopeless; or St. John of the Cross, who said we must experience “a dark night of the soul” before salvation; or Hopkins, who believes we must suffer as the poor rabbit did in the talons of The Windhover. Why must we always have a spear prodding our ribs or nails through our hands in order to be happy? I don’t think I have read one thing in my life, besides the Nike slogan, that tells me how to be unconditionally happy… sans peripherals.

Well I think I may have started to understand a bit why while reading “Deutschland,” (the dark epiphany is Man’s creation). I also think it may have something to do with the arguable “Hero” of Paradise Lost, Satan (Though I know far to little about Milton to explore this avenue and it might be a bit of a stretch). But I think have found a bit of help for the both of us. It comes out of the section of Edmund Burke’s “Philosophical Enquiry” entitled “Of the Sublime.”

“But as pain is stronger in its operation than pleasure, so death is in general a much more affecting idea than pain; because there are very few pains, however exquisite, which are not preferred to death: nay, what generally makes pain itself, if I may say so, more painful, is, that it is considered as an emissary of this king of terrors.”

Sadly what I’m about to say comes from the Worlds Largest Emporium of the Cliché, Country Music: “Live like you were dying” –Tim McGraw *see authors note

In seriousness, Burke says that the emissary of Death is pain, thus we need pain to remind us of death. The pain, whether associated with physical, mental, spiritual, pain of loss, pain of brevity, etc., written into the connotation of Sublime or Epiphany gives us reason to notice these phenomena. And because the pain also reminds us of death, it reminds us to enjoy the shit out of it because, Epiphany might strictly belong to this earthly, and mortal, existence.

According to many religious ideologies, we live, we die, and we go either someplace really bloody horrible to suffer for eternity, really indescribably nice to live perfectly and happily, or someplace right in the middle where we spend the rest of eternity trying to hit the red ball off the wooden paddle. I’m not trying to contradict that these places won’t be horrible or wonderful or boring as hell, in fact I think we can expect that, but they certainly wont be as invigorating, interesting, injuring, intimidating, or emancipating as right here on earth. I think of that Hindu line we talked about on Monday. “Atman is Brahman” means: “Self is God” or “Self is Divine” or better yet, “I am Divine.” It’s cosmic assurance that the present matters and may be the only thing that matters, the ultimate boost to insecurity or self-consciousness. I might even be inclined to desire my consciousness, soul, or what-have-you to completely end at my time death, but that conflicts a bit with my mild religious inclinations. I just hope whatever comes next isn’t boring.

This is what I love so much about the Aesthetic hero. An Aesthetic hero gets to enjoy the heck out of the only thing worth enjoying…everything. The Aesthetic Hero doesn’t fret over not making it from A to Z. If the Aesthetic hero makes it to Q, he pats himself on the back for a job well done and tries like hell to stumble upon R, regardless of the pain and terror that may be involved. Pain and Terror and Death don’t scare an Aesthetic Hero nearly as much as a life of monotony, whether it be in horror, bliss, or boredom.

Now I will divulge a bit from Wordsworth. I think a true Aesthetic hero, while in tune with all of the little “lofty cliffs,” “unripe fruit” and “hermit Hollows,” notices these as little blips of “oh! How lovely.” But true Aesthetic Hero saves him/herself for the bigger revelations in the world about him/her. The ones, as I have said before, that shake the inner guts of a person. The Epiphanies that occur “When the tongues of flame are infolded/ Into the crowned knot of fire/ And the fire and the rose are one.”

Thanks Tai for getting me rolling. I rather like our discussion.

Authors Note: I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.